"The
PSC represents l7,000 faculty and staff at CUNY—among whom are
6,600 teaching adjuncts, 600 graduate teaching fellows, 850
continuing education teachers, and 560 non-teaching adjuncts. This
brings the part-time workforce we represent to 8,610, or more than
half of the total instructional staff at CUNY. In l990, full-time
faculty taught 54% of the courses in CUNY’s community colleges,
and taught almost two-thirds of the classes in senior
institutions. By the end of the decade, these percentages had
fallen to 44% and 51% respectively."
Steve London, PSC First Vice President
"Adjunct appointments went from
22% in 1970 to 32 percent in 1982, to 42% in 1993, to a current
level of about 46% of all faculty nationwide. The issue of
contingent work has finally gained so much attention because the
numbers of contingent faculty are approaching a majority, a
situation already existing in the community colleges where almost
one half of all students are now enrolled in higher education.
"Rich Moser, AAUP
"NYU’s own statistics state
that there are 4,106 part-time faculty, nearly 21¼2 times more
than full-time….Adjuncts are paid less than $3,000 for a 14-week
course and most are limited to no more than two courses per
semester. NYU’s operating budget is approximately $1.6 billion
and their endowment was valued at over $1.1 billion as of August,
2000. NYU is a direct recipient of millions of dollars of State
funds ranging from Bundy Aid to direct grants for many of its
programs."
Julie Kushner, Sub-Regional Director, UAW Region 9A
"On average I have 150 students
per academic year. I can fairly say that I help generate $225,000
per academic year for the institution of which I, the professor,
receive less than l0% without any medical, disability, and
retirement benefits. The instructional budget for the University
yields 75% of monies allotted to those doing 30% of the teaching
load, and inversely, 25% of the budget given to those doing
three-quarters of the teaching."
Michael Pelias, Philosophy, LIU
"Currently both CUNY and SUNY
systems operate well below the ideal ratio of full-timers to
part-timers—CUNY is at 51% to 49%, while SUNY is at 62.3% to
37%.…NYPIRG sees the solution to this problem in two parts:
increased funding for full-time faculty lines, and increased
benefits for and [better] treatment of adjunct faculty."
Charlene Piper, New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG)/Brooklyn
College
"Between l988 and l998, the
operating budgets of New York’s public universities dropped 30%
while spending on New York’s prisons increased 76%. New York
spends just three percent of its tax revenue on higher education,
by far the lowest percentage of any state…and more of that on
technology initiatives designed to enhance the corporate bottom
line. The primacy of the market rewards the excellence of
twenty-five-year-old shortstops with tens or even hundreds of
millions of dollars, but punishes excellent college instructors
with subsistence well below the poverty line."
Ali Shehzad Zaidi, Modern Languages, Bronx CC